Modi criticised for exam irregularities amid lack of jobs

PRAYAGRAJ, India: India’s opposition parties and the country’s students on Thursday hit out at the new government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for irregularities in recent government-run tests for college admissions and government teaching jobs.

Modi surprisingly lost a parliamentary majority in a general election that ended this month partly because of joblessness, especially among the youth, exacerbated by frequent leaks of test papers for government jobs that are coveted by many Indians for the security.

Having to rely on fickle allies to run his third government, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party next faces local elections in the states of Haryana and Maharashtra where it did badly in the national vote.

The government late on Wednesday cancelled an examination done earlier this week for university and college teachers as well as doctorate courses, based on early inputs from a government cyber-crime analysis team that the “integrity of the aforesaid examination may have been compromised”.

It said in a statement the federal Central Bureau of Investigation would probe the matter.

The Ministry of Education said it had also sought a report from police into “certain irregularities alleged” in running another test for admission in undergraduate medical programmes in May.

The main opposition Congress party, on a high after its better-than-expected election result, said the “Modi government has ruined the country’s education and recruitment system”.